Monthly Archives: August 2018

“If Wyoming has to do things the same way as New Jersey, then the battle over federal power — and especially the metastatic power of the ever-more-princely presidency — must be understood by partisans and culture warriors as existential. That, and not the endangered state of what remains of American federalism, is what most deeply ails the body politic.”

We are witnessing a similar shift under Trump. The divide is not Democrat or Republican; they are merely marketing organizations for similar interests. The parties have become addicted to their power not their ideology. As Nancy Pelosi admonishes her candidates, “Just win.”

“It’s true that the Electoral College works against a party whose voters are geographically and demographically clustered. For the Framers, that was a feature, not a bug. They feared domination by a concentrated bloc of voters with no broad support across the country.”

Material rights to products and service that must be provided and paid for by others is inevitably oppressive and usually counterproductive. The secret to Hong Kong’s miraculous growth was the priority of economic growth over social spending. The economic growth provided the means for greater social spending. Over time if you give priority to growth over social spending you will end up with more of both, and a healthier and more sustainable economy.

“Who today indicates a willingness to curtail the civil liberties of opponents, including the media? Again, President Trump has said some ill-advised things on this score. But most of our authors acknowledge, quietly, that he hasn’t actually acted on any of it. Meanwhile, the Left openly argues against, and sometimes actively disrupts, their opponents’ right to assemble. “

“Right now, both parties are full of people who think this country can be run by a relative handful of people — or even one person – sitting in Washington. They think they’re smarter than the market or the people closest to the problems on the ground. “

Warren shows no understanding of what profit is. It is the signal that determines the best allocation of resources. The better ideas attract the most capital through the profit incentive. Profit is a byproduct of innovation and ideas. Ms. Warren would substitute this with a government bureaucracy who will determine the proper allocation of resources. The would not only squelch economic growth and innovation, it would increase corruption exponentially as businesses curried political rather than consumer approval. Startups would head overseas.

By acknowledging human flaws and addressing them, conservatives permit human potential to flourish. By seeking a non existent perfection socialists require central control and power that frustrates human potential and growth.

“What do you imagine would happen to the price of a Honda Civic if the federal government gave every young person in the country ten grand and a subsidized loan that could only be used for the purchase of a Honda Civic? “

“..a Stanford graduate now usually knows less history than his Hillsdale counterpart. A successful self-made businessman can know a lot more about the economy than does a Harvard M.B.A., and a state-college graduate is likely to have better ethical bearings that the Clintons with their Yale Law degrees.”

“The larger the state is, the more capable it is of picking winners and losers, and the more aggressively it will be lobbied to do so in a particular way. And while it is easily misunderstood in this age of the modern regulatory state, the tariff is perhaps the earliest example of big government — the state intervenes in otherwise free markets to bring about a result it finds socially or economically desirable. “

From the first progressive era the left has preached democracy but delivered a credentialed new aristocracy with increasing contempt for the voters who do not acquiesce. It is called democracy when the mass abides the elite, populism when they do not.